Apple Buys Musicmetric

Apple has acquired a London music startup. The tech giant has bought the company behind music analytics service Musicmetric, Musically reports. 

Musicmetric owner Semetric changed its registered address to 100 New Bridge Street in London, home of Apple Europe Ltd. On the same day, it also filed documents to detail the appointment of a new director. He’s called Gene Daniel Levoff and up until now has been based at Apple’s global HQ.

Apple told Musically that it “buys smaller technology companies from time to time,” adding that it doesn’t “generally discuss our purpose or plan”. Semetric also declined to comment.

It’s speculated that Apple’s latest purchase could pave the way for the company to expand its music services. Apple wants to better tune its music arms: iTunes will likely be overhauled. But it’s Beats Music that stands to benefit most. Apple is going to relaunch the platform this year and there’s talk it could come pre-installed on iPhones and iPads.

Musicmetric launched in 2008 and allows music industry clients to track social and sales analytics through a dashboard, Musically writes — it also offers data streaming. In Jan. 2013 it received $4.8 million in funding.

Musicmetric says it’s about “turning big data into big opportunities”, and continues: “Whether you’re planning your first album launch or a global tour, on the lookout for new talent or after some killer intelligence to help pick your next brand ambassador, the Musicmetric dashboard will quickly and simply tell you all you need to know.”

How Apple chooses to use and develop Musicmetric remains to be seen, but one certainty is the implications the acquisition has for other streaming companies such as Spotify and Next Big Sound.

Here’s what Musically says:

Spotify has a partnership with Musicmetric to pipe in streaming data for labels to access via the latter’s dashboard.

Just as rival streaming services ended their partnerships with music/tech firm The Echo Nest firm when Spotify bought it last year, so Spotify is unlikely to be too keen on providing a firehose of its data to an Apple subsidiary.